Yesterday was spent travelling, although for a change I flew to and from Monza, rather than the more romantic option of driving. Speed cameras have dulled some of the joys of the open road, although I still prefer it to the cattle markets that are the airports of today.
Cattle markets in shopping malls.
There were some enlightening moments on the way. In the cab on the way to Linate airport I was idly listening to the Italian radio – just keeping up with the verbal machine gun noises. It was a show all about food, called Gastronaut, a nice play on words. I remembered as the host was describing the difficulty of finding a certain kind of exotic flour, to make a very specific type of bread, that the Gastonaut is a man called Davide Paolini, who in a previous life was the managing director of the Benetton F1 team, back on the days when the team was using BMW engines and had just won its first race with a youngster called Gerhard Berger. Paolini was shoveled out of the way to make space for a flash harry called Flavio Briatore, after the Benetton Family were somehow convinced that he would do a better job. The team did win races, but all too often when it did controversy.
I always wondered what would have happened if Paolini had stayed on. Still, he has since built himself the Gastronaut empire, and good on him. He is a good example of how F1 people can achieve much outside the sport because they have a different mindset to others. They move at a faster pace.
This was highlighted in another way later in the trip when I was transferring from the funny little train that takes travelers from Orly Airport to join the Paris transport system. I had not been hanging about, scything through the wombles one finds on all airports, but as we went through the ticket machines was a Japanese colleague, who is based in Paris. We were the first two off the train.
“It’s funny how the F1 people are always at the front,” I mused, as we rushed onward.
Today I’m on a Eurostar and back to London so unless there is anything really wild, it will probably be a little quiet. Amazingly the Eurostar has yet to get wireless Internet access!
joeblogsf1 
Hi Joe
As a F1 lover of 54 years (my age is a tad more…) but having only discovered your site this season, may I thank you for all the additional little stories you publish which, at first sight, appear unconnected but which turn out to be so interesting…
Womble – yep that’ll me. It’s my coping mechanism to just roll with the flow. Fighting for the front seems like too much effort.
Classic Joe. Linking one nugget we would never have a hope of knowing with something contemporary.
Is that a typo at the end of para 3? Missed word or should controversy be controversially?
Joe, Enjoy London but reading your previous article made me wonder how many articles over a typical race weekend you write and for any many magazines/Sites?
Would love to see an article that covers the typical weekend for you in the sport, the people you meet, the conversation subjects that get covered etc…
Might give us an insight on what it takes to do GP+ and the life of a Journo. Is there a ratio between the folks you meet and the articles that come out over the weekend.
Steve
PS this might be the start of your Autobiography 🙂
I love the term ‘gastronaut’. The brilliant, and usually marinated, Keith Floyd would occasionally describe his viewers as (his) “little gastronauts’ as he went on his gastronomic journeys around the world. Unfortunately Floyd has dated poorly in this era of TV chefs but it was he that is largely responsible for my love of food today, and I still refer to myself as a gastronaut to this day!
They occasionally show Keith’s programmes on saturday kitchen, saturday am about ten (ish). Very funny to watch him sloshing down the vino collapso !
That’s BBC one or two in the UK, by the way..
Floyd, wonderful man! I shall always remember him in Hong Kong harbour in sampan, in a hurricane, barely able to stand in the wind, the camera swinging wildly, cooking on a small one position stove, wine glass in hand of course. His enthusiasm has only ever been matched occasionally by Rick Stein on his canal journeys through France, usually having a row with his director on camera.
‘..Scything through the wombles..’ What a great phrase 🙂
Linate used to be fairly sparsely provided with shops or anything except an expensive cafe/restaurant, in the days I used it, the best that could be said for it according to my supplier friend Willie Zizzioli, was that it was nicer than Malpenza, the other airport for Torino, it means headache in Italian and is appropriate.
Good luck with the weather in London Joe, it has dropped 10 C today and the rain is coming in from the Atlantic.
I used to scythe through the crowds who all seem to move, as if hypnotised, at 2 mph, but then I got married. If accompanied by your better half, not only are you reduced to the mass crawl pace but you have to stop and look at things on the way or to adjust straps, things in bags, or bits of clothing.
This applies to any area with crowds, shopping centres (I refuse to call them malls) stations, airports, the seaside etc. The must be some type of mass hypnosis beam included entrance to these places.
JoeQ/
Today I’m on a Eurostar and back to London so unless there is anything really wild, it will probably be a little quiet. Amazingly the Eurostar has yet to get wireless Internet access!
/JoeQ
I think this qualifies as “really wild”; James has all-but-announced Lewis has signed with Mercedes.
A sad, but predictable outcome, and forebodes a sticky end.
Looks like McLaren were indeed mad enough to let him go.
I am yet to be convinced
Good Man, giving us hope sanity will prevail over ego.
But, like you, James doesn’t amplify rumours, he makes it clear it’s his educated opinion, and like you, he’s usually correct.
We’ll know for certain soon enough.
I guess I have more faith in Lewis than he does!
And more than me it would seem!
The smoke thickens, now hiding the mirrors.
Or is that a bit too esoteric. (or was it another word?) Maybe it can be worked into a haiku before the matter is settled.
Not having wireless access can be a good thing sometimes.
Anyone who missed it before may like to note that “Grand Prix the killer years” is repeated at 9pm BST tonight on BBC4.
You said:
>In the cab on the way to Linate airport I was idly listening to the
>Italian radio – just keeping up with the verbal machine gun noises.
So now you’re fluent in Italian too? (there’s no way someone not fluent in a language is going to be able to understand commercial radio!) Come on, how many languages are you fluent in? 🙂
Rule number one: never tell people how many languages you understand.
And I always though Rule One was: “Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men”. 🙂
I never realised that Terry Pratchett knew Bernie…
And rule number two????
Don’t laugh at jokes told in Swiss German.
Swiss Germans tell jokes????
Yes, and they’re hilarious, but no-one laughs at them because of rule 2.
‘Never voluntarily give up the advantage of being able to say “I’m sorry, I didn’t know that wasn’t allowed” ‘
I remember an interview of Davide Paolini in Autosprint where he said that mortadella is simply more mouth watering than salmon. Same here, mitico Davide! Keep it up! Very thinly sliced, with a glass of Lambrusco (not the the sweet one, which is for tourists). Cin cin!
I hope you’re being a bit sarcastic about the ‘F1 people moving faster and are always found in front’. F1 is a small world….there are plenty people in the world moving fast that have nothing to do with F1. Yes some of them (people in F1) are (very) specially talented…but so are a lot of people in different professions. Although maybe not meant that way….this article comes across as being self-important…
Read it as you like. But it is a fact. F1 people move faster than most people in all walks of life. It is the mentality. Sure there are a few outside the sport who travel at the same pace but in my experience that is not many. Lots of others think they move fast.
In defence of the Eurostar it does go through a slightly big tunnel which is not great for wireless connectivity.
It also spends a lot of it’s journey outside the tunnel.
Time to download some photos from the iPhone Joe
“Cattle markets in shopping malls.” 🙂
I always think of Mos Eisley Cantina when in an airport- “a wretched hive of scum and villainy”
I preferred when they called it Speke…
Once I arrived at BKK, so wrung out from travelling, I slipped of my shoes, and crashed on the departure lounge floor, as we often do.
When I awoke several hours later, my shoes had been half-inched, forcing me to walk to my train connection in my socks! On the way I folded and slipped some cardboard in as a sole. Interesting experience. Not many bonze go barefoot nowadays. I now know why!
Joe,
What about cattle markets at GP week-ends?
Steve Matchett of Speed TV in the US and formerly of Benetton goes out of his way once or twice a year to note that a slew of his Benetton mates are in significant positions up and down pit wall. Did Briatore “staff” the Benetton team, or did Paolini?
Benetton was a creation of many different people.